Instability and the Sea

A Story by Ridley Beaumont

I lay down in the shower.

And I suppose that's strange to some people, but to me its just like a bath except the water never gets cold.

When my eyes are closed and the hot water hits and the music is playing quietly from the next room, I can finally think. I spend a lot of time thinking, but this is when I feel most free.

The only problem is, once I open my eyes, I feel...kind of lost...lost and dizzy and alarmed...

The ceiling...white and framed by the pale, peeling yellow paint of the walls...the frame of the top of the shower...but its not a ceiling and its not a shower...just shapes...shapes....shapes, everywhere...

I blink my eyes but suddenly the colors seem all wrong, the water isn't liquid, just more shapes...but everything else...everything else becomes the water...its flowing and twisting and I feel like I'm...I'm just watching a television except that I don't like tv, and I don't like this either...not at all...and suddenly my stomach is twisting with everything around me...

I put a hand on my stomach, I can feel the water and my skin, but my skin doesn't feel me back and I wonder whose body am I trapped in...whose body am I touching...and when...when did I become so misplaced...

I reach for the towel outside of the shower and pull the corner over my eyes...I didn't grab a regular towel this time...I had meant to, but this was my beach towel from the summer, with its faded pink and white stripes...the beach....the beach and the sand and the salt and the waves...

I stood for hours out in those waves, mind aching with pending decisions...what to do...what to do...to stay or go or give up or cry or drown...and the waves...the waves...Families everywhere, my own on the shore, and I stood alone in those waves, sun blazing across my shoulders...salt on my lips....and the towel's over my eyes but it doesn't smell like the ocean anymore, only detergent...

The music clicks off and I pull the towel away and wait for the shapes to stop spinning...Six months later, still weighted with the same choices, still finding solace in the water...still holding back from drowning...in the water, in my tears, in my own mind...Six months later, six months closer to insanity...

Memories are everywhere but none of them feel like they are mine...The beach was just a movie I once saw, the shapes only things I learned so long ago...the water, the skin...whose are they? Do they miss them? I wouldn't...

Suddenly the silence makes me nervous...the music...what happened to the music...the cd must have ended...yes that's it...but when did silence become so heavy?

I crack the shower door but the thick writing on the mirror makes me recoil...familiar words, but from where? Letters everywhere...in pink lipstick and blue eyeliner...the things I own but never wear...but are they mine? Is this my bathroom? I can't remember...why does this all seem so wrong? But the words...the words...the echo of music notes...song lyrics...I wrote them there only days before, but days could have been weeks...maybe? I don't know... Where is this place again?

The yellow walls are beginning to feel like disease and this other world I woke up in is beginning to frighten me...I am new to this place and it feels so strange...so...wrong...and what terrors might be lurking here...in this room...in my mind...or are they the same? Is this place only in my head? It must be...this doesn't feel real at all...

I can't take it anymore and the water is starting to turn cold...I wash the last traces of shampoo from my hair and shut off the water...The walls are moving because I stood up so fast, but it will pass...it always does...The towel is around me...The smell of shampoo and detergent is riding on the steam and settling on the mirror around my crooked letters...letters...words that meant so much...that caught my attention and made me feel understood and just a little sad...and what a way to live...and the cold air is on my wet skin and suddenly I feel tired...so tired...

I step into the next room...my bedroom...and things begin to stabilize...The walls stop moving and shapes become things...roses I bought myself when I felt lonely...my sketchpad on the floor...photographs of people I love...people...people who seem to have forgotten me...and these decisions...oh these decisions...what a tragedy...what a way to lose one's mind...what a sad, sad loss...

And things stop feeling real again and I fall and I cry and I cry and I cry and I drown.